1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates to a vital signal detection system, and more particularly to a driver drowsiness prediction system and method thereof.
2. Related Art
Driver fatigue is one of the major reasons for traffic accidents. When fatigued, the driver usually enters a dozing condition, resulting in traffic accidents.
FIG. 1 shows a basic process for a drowsiness preventing system in the conventional technology. Such a drowsiness preventing system must obtain and further analyze the driver's vital signs, as shown in Step 1 and Step 2. Such a drowsiness preventing system determines if the driver is dozing according the analysis result of the vital signals, as shown in Step 3. If the driver is dozing, such a drowsiness preventing system performs an awakening operation to awaken the driver, as shown in Step 4.
In the conventional technologies, the methods to detect drowsiness of a driver include: motion detection of the driver's head, as mentioned in Taiwan patent No. M363417; detection of the driver's eye blinking frequency; and detection of brain waves, as mentioned in U.S. Pat. No. 5,813,993. Among these methods, since the detections of the driver's head and the driver's eye blinking frequency usually have misjudging problems, drivers are unwilling to use such types of anti-drowsiness systems. The detection of brain waves has relatively higher accuracy since such method is adjustable according to the characteristics of brain waves of different individuals.
As shown in FIG. 1, even though Step 4 performs the awakening operation, such an awakening operation does not guarantee keeping the driver awake, and others cannot provide any assistance either. Consequently, the awakening processes shown in FIG. 1 still has the risk of failing to awaken the driver, and allowing the driver to keep dozing off